Ways You Can Support Your Children at Home: Talking and Listening

Ways to support your child at home

Reading together

Teach lots of nursery rhymes – each one tells a different story. Enjoy and share books together – buy or borrow books that will fire their imagination and interest. Read and reread those they love best. Make time to read with your child throughout their time in school – PLEASE continue reading to your child, even when they are reading independently. This is very important – your child needs to practice their reading skills every day, and needs the support of an interested adult. Grandparents, older brothers or sisters can help, too. Let them see you reading – grown-ups can share their magazines about their favourite sport or hobby. Read with your child – ask your child to attempt unknown words, using their phonic skills and knowledge. Make sure they blend all through the word. Talk about the meaning of the book, too – take time to talk about what is happening in the book, or things that they found really interesting in an information book. Discuss the characters and important events. Ask them their views. Provide toys, puppets and dressing up clothes that will help them to act out stories. Explain the meaning of words (vocabulary) that your child can read but may not understand, for example, flapped, roared. Listen to story CD’s. Teach your child some action rhymes – ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’, ’Here we go round the mulberry bush’, ‘We all clap hands together'. Use CD’s and IPods of nursery rhymes to sing along to. Read simple rhyming books together – leave out a rhyming word now and then, and see if your child can work out the missing word. If not, you say it. Borrow or buy the best books you can to share with your child. Libraries and bookshops can advise you of the most popular books. Add sound effects when reading a story and encourage your child to join in. A quiet area with some cushions and toys is a comfortable place where you and your child can go to look at a book together.

Initial sounds

 Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.  Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Milo makes music’, ‘Naheema’s nose’.  Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.  Play ‘I spy’ Segmenting and blending

Robot-talk  Find real objects around your home that have three phonemes (sounds) and practise ‘robot talk’. First, just let them listen, then see if they will join in, for example, saying: ‘I spy a p-e-g – peg.’ ‘I spy a c-u-p – cup.’ ‘Where’s your other s-o-ck – sock?’ ‘Simon says – put your hands on your h-ea-d.’ ‘Simon says – touch your ch-i-n.’ ‘Simon says – pick up your b-a-g.’

Activities to help children to see that reading and spelling are reversible processes.

Magnetic letters Buy magnetic letters for your fridge, or for use with a tin tray. Find out which letters have been taught – have fun finding these with your child and place them on the magnetic surface. Making little words together Make little words together, for example, it, up, am, and, top, dig, run, met, pick. As you select the letters, say them aloud: ‘a-m – am’, ‘m-e-t – met’. Nonsense or made up words can make it good fun! Breaking words up Now do it the other way around: read the word, break the word up and move the letters away, saying: ‘met – m-e-t’. Don’t forget the writing box! Spelling is harder than reading words – praise, don’t criticise. Whiteboards and pens, and magic boards, are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting. Make or buy an alphabet poster.

Ways you can support your children at home: writing together

Magic writing boards are great fun for children, both little and larger versions. It won’t be long before they will be trying to write their names! Write with your child – ‘think aloud’ so they can hear the decisions you are making as you write. Make sure the writing is for a purpose, for example, a birthday message, a shopping list, an address. Talk about the words they see in everyday life – food packaging, signs in the supermarkets, captions on buses and lorries, messages on birthday cards and invitations. Write a shopping list together. Send an email to a family member or a friend – your child says the message, you write it! Provide your child with a shoe box full of things to write with – writing tools of various sizes and thicknesses: gel pens, crayons, glitter pens, rainbow pencils, old birthday cards, coloured paper, sticky tape to make little books. Rolls of wallpaper can be attached to a table or wall to provide a large canvas for their writing and drawing. Praise them for their play writing – those early squiggles and marks show that your child is beginning to understand writing.

Writing

Using their whole body For handwriting children need to be well co-ordinated through their whole body, not just their hands and fingers. Games that help co-ordination include throwing balls at a target, under-arm and over-arm, and bouncing balls – also skipping on the spot, throwing a Frisbee, picking up pebbles from the beach and throwing them into the sea. Have fun! Hand and finger play Action rhymes such as ‘Incy wincy spider’, ‘One potato, two potato’ and ‘Tommy Thumb’ are great fun and get their hands and fingers moving. Playing with salt dough or clay really helps strengthen little fingers, as does cookery and using simple toolkits. Hand–eye co-ordination Pouring water into jugs and cups of different sizes, sweeping up with a dustpan and brush, cutting, sticking, tracing, threading beads, completing puzzles, peeling off stickers and sticking them in the right place – these all help hand–eye co-ordination.

Pencil hold The ‘pincer’ movement needs to be practised. This is important as it enables children to hold a pencil properly as they write. Provide them with kitchen tongs and see if they can pick up small objects. Move on to challenging them to pick up smaller things, for example, little cubes, sugar lumps, dried peas, lentils, first with chopsticks, then with tweezers. Ask children to peg objects to a washing line. Provide plenty or different types of pen and pencil; hold their hand to practise the correct grip.

Ways you can support your children at home: what to do if your child is reluctant to read or write at home DON’T PANIC! Reading  Make sure your child sees you reading.  Read to your child. Show you like the book. Bring stories to life by using loud/soft/scary voices – let yourself go!  Spread books around your house for your child to dip into.  Let your child choose what they would like to read – books, comics, catalogues.  Read favourite books over and over again. Enjoy! Writing  Make sure your child sees you writing.  Compose an email together, inviting a friend over to tea.  Continue to make words together, using magnetic letters.  Leave a message on the fridge door and encourage them to write a reply to you.  Make up a story together about one of their toys. You write for them, repeating the sentences as you write. When the story is complete they can draw pictures to go with it.  Buy stickers of a favourite film or TV programme and make a book about it.

Phase 3 phonics

 Sing an alphabet song together.  Play ‘I spy’, using letter names as well as sounds.  Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the two grapheme (letter) combinations: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading rain = r-ai-n – segmenting for spelling b-oa-t = boat blending for reading boat = b-oa-t – segmenting for spelling h-ur-t = hurt blending for reading hurt = h-ur-t – segmenting for spelling  Praise your child for trying out words.  Ask teachers for a list of the tricky words.  Set a timer. Call out one word at a time and get your child to spell it on a magic board or a small whiteboard, against the timer – remember, they can use magnetic letters.  Play ‘Pairs’, turning over two words at a time trying to find a matching pair. This is especially helpful with the tricky words: the the, to to, no no, go go, I I  Don’t worry if they get some wrong! These are hard to remember – they need plenty of practice.